Hell, probably
by Albino Magpie
Summary: It's funny how fast you find yourself regressing to the natural state. Seto Kaiba just found that out. Postseries prideshipping, written for a contest.


**A/N: **Be aware that this has prideshipping (sort of). Written for a contest.

"Checkmate."

The piece clicked down precisely on the antique chessboard. Thin silver wires delineating the black and white squares picked up the piece's position and transmitted the information to two sleek LCD screens.

A simple rendering of the board was superimposed with the word Checkmate.

The other Yugi frowned. He tapped his fingers on the table impatiently, subjecting the pieces to a last inspection. Though he knew that he'd lost, it seemed as if he wanted to figure out the how and why of it.

Seto would have liked to gloat about this - less than easy, it had to be admitted - victory.

He didn't. Chess, unlike Duel Monsters, was a game with all the surrounding pomp cut off.

Basic and black-and-white, not an occasion for holographic extravaganzas, and not one for a sore winner.

Besides, it was hard to be a sore winner in the face of someone who was such an elegant and composed loser. Barring life- or world-threatening situations, the other Yugi covered his ill grace with a dignity that almost seemed genuine.

"That was an interesting game," he stated with a completely level voice. Nothing betrayed the fact that he must have been seething inside.

"It's an allegory, " Seto allowed himself to jab a little, and felt a smirk growing on his face. That was as far as he went, though. Not because he did not feel like sticking the needle in further. He certainly did, what with winning at his own game on his own ground.

But too many barbs on his side would doubtlessly be countered by a monologue of Shakespearean proportions by the self-styled Pharaoh. He seemed to feel that speeches like this had to be the ultimate conclusion of any game.

"When I practice, I will make sure to alternate between white and black," his opponent countered, "so I will feel comfortable with playing both."

Seto had to admit that he covered his bile extremely convincingly. But he refused to believe that any person, any person at all, could be without resentment at something like this.

Losing was simply hateful, and winning was simply satisfying, and that was how people worked.

"In the end you have to choose one colour. Sticking to it will give you an advantage," Seto stood up. Using his own height as an advantage was gratifying in a most primitive way, even if it wasn't much of an achievement.

"So you've chosen between black and white, Kaiba?" the other Yugi got up from his chair as well, a first trace of acid evident in his voice. He did not stop his attempts to be a white knight for one moment, it appeared.

Seto had a sudden and totally unsportsmanlike desire to spit in his face. He tried to take a calming breath, failed, and leaned down, his balled fists resting on the table. He honestly didn't know why he kept on putting up with this.

"I distinctly remember a time when you didn't care so much for presenting yourself as an incorruptible hero," he spat out his words, recalling a time when the man whose existence he'd then denied had not bothered to hide his acid and swallow it, but instead spit it at those who got in his way.

They might have taken the bare-handed scrabble for survival and transformed it into a mental pursuit. They might have clothed the ugly parts in pomp. But the simple, dirty core remained.

Man desired by nature to get to the top by stepping on the faces of those below him, and stabbing the ones above.

The other Yugi acted like he had never felt this before. Like he'd never delighted in violence that he carried out in a pretense of righteousness. He swallowed all of his anger and all of his acid until his stomach must have been bloated from it.

Seto wished he would just burst.

The repressed acid boiled over, and he did burst.

"I distinctly remember a time," the Pharaoh said, odd purple eyes flashing, the knuckles on his clenched fists turning white, "when you were a monster."

Seto saw red. The careful intellectual construct around his base desires burned away, and Hobbes' natural state bubbled up.

Solitary, nasty and brutish.

His arm swiped across the chessboard, sending the priceless pieces scattering across the room.

The gesture, while brash, was far less than enough. He drew his arm back again, and hit the other Yugi full across the face.

Before he had time to be decently shocked at his own behaviour, his opponent had already launched himself over the table, smashing one of the LCD screens in the process, and punched him in the gut so hard it knocked him off balance.

He had not expected this reaction. But it was suddenly very much what he'd hoped for. Not defensive moves that held the other at bay, but vicious shameless attacks.

They landed on the hard metal floor almost rolling. The other Yugi ended up on top, one of his hands in a death grip around Seto's arm.

His other arm was wedged under him at an awkward angle and being crushed into the floor by their combined weight. Seto looked up at a furious face, a bright red mark on the cheek where he'd struck.

Sudden animal fury boiled up as he realized that he was more or less pinned. He tried to pull out his trapped arm, which only resulted in a burst of pain from his shoulder.

In an attempt to escape and free his hands, he smacked his forehead into the Pharaoh's nose.

There was a startlingly loud crack, and blood spurted on his face.

Finding the grip on his arms relaxing, Seto scrambled up onto his knees only in time to dodge a hit aimed at his jaw.

As he twisted out of its way, the blow connected with his neck instead. The absurd spiked wristband caught on his skin, scraping so hard it drew blood.

He barely registered it, instead using what momentum he had left to swipe out with his leg in an attempt to trip the other Yugi up.

Instead, their legs caught and locked, knocking them both off balance and sending them sprawling in opposite directions.

_What am I doing, _Seto was sprawled on his back, gasping for air, _and why am I doing it? _

There was no answer. There was only the atavisticaly satisfying feeling of fighting somebody bare-handed. The adrenalin it spilled into his brain spelled out a clear message –_ this is why. _

There was not enough time to think. He dodged out of the way.

The Pharaoh bruised his fist on the plastic floor instead of – as he'd intended – burying in his stomach.

Seto raised himself to his knees. His leg hurt. He and his long-time rival seemed to have gone spontaneously insane, and he wished he was holding his gun.

Not to shoot the other Yugi, just to stop whatever it was that conspired to make them fight like a pair of savages.

_On the other hand, _Seto thought, finally managing to knock the Pharaoh on his back with a hard shove, _keep the gun. This is better. _

The Pharaoh tried to get up into a sitting position, cursing in an unfamiliar language.

Seto braced his forearms against the other's collarbone and pushed him back down. He raised his head a little, in case the Pharaoh got the idea to copy his earlier move.

Speaking of which, he still had someone else's blood on his face and down the front of his shirt.

It should have been disgusting. Somehow, it wasn't.

The other Yugi attempted to knee him in the stomach, making the most of this limited space.

Seto retaliated by pinning his legs underneath his own knees. He smiled, noticing that the blood had dried on his face and made his skin feel unpleasantly tight.

_Simple physical superiority, _he thought. The perversely primitive satisfaction of it was quickly and effectively diminished when he realized what sort of terribly awkward situation they were.

Awkward in the sense of _my arm is twisted and my leg still hurts _as well as I _am in closer physical contact with my rival than I should care for. _

The adrenalin rush - if it was that and not temporary insanity - passed. What remained was a burning in his cheeks and his neck, a very pronounced breathlessness and the feeling that he should better get up from this position quite fast.

For some reason, he didn't, at least not immediately. There was a tingle in his fingertips and along his spine.

He could tell that the Pharaoh had taken a deep breath because he felt his chest inflate.

Seto forced himself to stop looking at a neutral point on the wall, and looked at his rival instead.

His face was streaked with blood, and Seto supposed he did not look any better.

He really should get up.

The other Yugi seemed to think the same.

"_Kaiba_," he said pronouncedly, in that accusatory tone that Seto knew and hated.

He stood up, pretending that his pride hadn't been injured and oddly vindicated at the same time, and brushed some imaginary dirt off his coat.

Not that it helped. It would probably have to be thrown out, what with someone having bled all over it.

The Pharaoh got up as well and gave him a look so pointed it was liable to draw blood.

"Now that we are finished, _what in the world was that about?_"

Seto found the implication that this was all his fault only slightly unfair. After all, Yugi's alter ego had fought back, and done so viciously and without a shred of chivalry. Or civility, for that matter. But if they'd both broken some sort of self-imposed rules, did that make them even?

For some reason, that was even worse than losing.

But the answer to his question was easy.

_You dared to pass judgment on me. You gave yourself that power. You denied my humanity to me._

"You called me a monster," he said, trying not to sound as bitter as he felt. The cover of spite was one he knew to use well, so he used it, "you're judge, jury and _executioner_."

From the pained cringe and the way his shoulders slumped just a fraction, the other Yugi knew exactly what he meant. The time when he had been all three, especially a mercilessly creative executioner of his own judgements.

He shook his head, and continued, still in that unbearable white-knight voice, "_Kaiba,_" he said, voice still accusatory, "I was trying to imply that you'd cha-"

_Changed? _

Seto lost consciousness.

He woke up.

Thick rubber straps dug into his chest and smaller ones held the oxygen mask in place on his face.

His body felt cramped and terribly uncomfortable, and a worried woman was looking down at him.

She was pretty in a generic sort of way, the mint shade of her hair the only thing that set her apart from her colleagues.

"Excuse me, Sir," she said, loosening the straps that had been holding him down, "we had to stop the simulation. Your heart rate was dangerously elevated, and your brainwaves were indicating pain and confusion."

Seto fumbled the mask off his face. His mouth tasted like stored oxygen.

"Really, were they," he said acerbically, narrowing his eyes at her. He wasn't surprised about that.

The secretary blanched a little, possibly fearing for her job security.

Seto sat up, absently rubbing a spot on his neck where he was sure he'd been wounded.

Marvelous, wasn't it, the way he managed to sink into the simulation so deeply that he believed it to be real?

He didn't know why he had chosen Yugi's bizarre alter ego as a test for the AI-generated personality.

_I really don't know why I bother with this. Maybe I need the opposition. _

Tests nearly every other day had shown how apt the AI was at simulating somebody's every habit down to their style at games they had, when alive, never played.

_It's been close to two years since he went. Wherever we go. _

Hell, probably. His chest felt tight.

A computer-generated afterlife, certainly. If you looked past the fact that it was an AI living out the other Yugi's personality past the time of his life.

Seto snorted and climbed out of the module. The front of his coat was pristine, even though he'd tasted the blood.

Loneliness he could deal with. Other people, on the whole, where hell.

But the AI would need another test run tomorrow, to make sure the system was working flawlessly.


End file.
